The Indian numbering system and how it is written
I can read and write large numbers the way they appear in India
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
इस फ़्लैट की क़ीमत एक करोड़ है।
This flat costs ten million.
उसकी तनख़्वाह दस लाख सालाना है।
His salary is a million a year.
12,34,567 रुपये
1,234,567 rupees
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
| हज़ार | 1,000 |
| लाख | 1,00,000 - a hundred thousand |
| करोड़ | 1,00,00,000 - ten million |
| अरब | 1,00,00,00,000 - a billion |
After the first three digits, Indian grouping is in twos: 12,34,567 rather than 1,234,567. This is standard in newspapers, price tags and bank statements.
लखपति and करोड़पति are the words for wealth, and करोड़पति is in the title of the country's biggest game show.
Apply this grammar in B1 course exercises
Practice ExercisesReading Indian comma placement as if it were the three-digit system.
Indian comma placement read as three-digit grouping
After the first three digits the groups are twos: 12,34,567.
lakh and crore converted wrongly
lakh is 100,000 and crore is 10,000,000.
इस फ़्लैट की क़ीमत एक करोड़ है।
This flat costs ten million.
crore, with no Russian single-word equivalent.
उसकी तनख़्वाह दस लाख सालाना है।
His salary is a million a year.
Salaries are quoted in lakhs per year.
12,34,567 रुपये
1,234,567 rupees
The Indian grouping of the same number.
The check for this topic is still being prepared
Ready-made hints are free
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in B1 course exercises
The Government of India standard for Devanagari spelling, followed for all written forms here.
R. S. McGregor's outline, the standard concise academic description of Hindi morphology.